English homophones
he'd/heed
2 "he'd, heed" spellings share pronunciation /hiːd/; meaning alone separates them. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Meaning separates the spellings
he'd, heed are held together only by pronunciation /hiːd/. With no grammar or frequency gap large enough to tip the choice, read each definition before you commit a spelling.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "he" then splits - "he'd" (4 letters) vs "heed" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across he'd, heed: deh. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
he'd
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory deh · no private letters vs siblings
heed
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory deh · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "he'd" when you mean: Contraction of he + had.
- Write "heed" when you mean: Careful attention.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- heed ← ehed · hede · heedd · hheed
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (he'd, heed). Here's where to go from here.
- "heed" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #16,041 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 2 spellings ranks #133 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 2-spelling cluster: how · Howe. Nearby cluster
- Each spelling in "he'd, heed" has its own headword page with definition, IPA, and misspelling variants. First entry
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.